being alone but in a metropolis: the worst place in the world to find solitude is the country; questions grow there, and that unpleasant Christian commodity, neighbours.'-Walpole to Sir Horace Mann, Oct. 3rd, 1743. 'Where has Commerce such a mart, 'What is London? Clean, commodious, neat; but, a very few things indeed excepted, an endless addition of littleness to littleness, extending itself over a great tract of land.'-Edmund Burke in 1792, (Corres., iii. 422, ed. 1844). 'I began to study the map of London, though dismayed at the sight of its prodigious extent. The river is no assistance to a stranger in finding his way. There is no street along its banks, and no eminence from whence you can look around and take your bearings.'-Southey, (Espriella's Letters, i. 73.) We see a second edition of this Handbook advertised, and are pleased to learn that, though it is to be in one volume in place of two, not only is there to be no curtailment of matter, but the author will be found to have added largely to what he originally produced. We meditate a longer article on Londoniana' in our next Number, and may probably find reason to include Mr. Cunningham's revised work in our list. That he will have many opportunities of still further enriching the book, we have no sort of doubt. ART. IX.-The Affair at Dolly's Brae.* The Speeches of the Right Honourable the Lord Stanley, the Earl of Roden, and the Earl of Enniskillen, in the House of Lords, on Monday the 18th February, 1850. Pp. 39. INCE we last addressed the public, the dismissal of the Earl of Roden and his brother magistrates has been the subject of a debate in the House of Lords, on which occasion these three speeches were delivered. It is certainly gratifying to us to find that the view which we had taken of this question has been confirmed, even to its minutest detail, by the masterly exposition and unanswerable logic of Lord Stanley, and by the plain, straightforward, and decisive testimony of Lords Roden and men. * It has been said in the Edinburgh Review that this pass was so called from a poor woman whose son was some thirty-four years ago murdered there by some OrangeWe will take upon ourselves to assert that there is no colour whatever for this absurd derivation. It is so called, we are assured, from one Dolly Jameson, who kept a public-house on the hili-side, and was a rather notorious personage in those parts. Enniskillen, Enniskillen. Nor was anything even alleged by Lord Clarendon, in a defence chiefly remarkable for a not very dexterous evasion of all the facts of the case, which has in the slightest degree impugned our statements or weakened our conclusionsnothing that could justify this (as Lord Stanley justly characterised it) impolitic, unjust, and arbitrary act on the part of the Government.' The debate demonstrated that the whole conduct of the Irish Executive in this case was, from first to last, indefensible-weak in the outset, blundering in its progress, and unconstitutional in its conclusions; and that its officer, Mr. Berwick, was most partial, one-sided, and wrong-sided, in his manner of executing the duties of his illegal commission. There are, however, two points, and two points only, in Lord Clarendon's defence which seem to deserve some notice. The first is, that his Lordship repeats his denial of any participation in the supply of arms to the Dublin Orangemen in 1848, as stated in the Report of the Grand Lodge,' and particularly that he knew absolutely nothing of the advance of 6007. made by Captain Kennedy to buy those arms. We before said that this denial seemed to us hardly reconcilable with admitted facts. It becomes more incomprehensible still from this passage of Lord Enniskillen's speech: 'My Lords, there is not one word contained in that "Report" which is not founded upon facts, able to be established upon oath. The noble Earl states that he never gave a single stand of arms to the Orangemen of Dublin. I never said that he did; for, at an interview that I had with the noble Earl at the Viceregal Lodge, he distinctly told me that he could not do so;-but at a meeting which took place one or two days afterwards, I met, by appointment, Major Turner, the Master of the Horse to the Lord-Lieutenant, with two or three other gentlemen. I sincerely regret, my Lords, that Major Turner has been removed, by the hand of Providence, from this world; for he would have borne me out in what I now state. This interview lasted about an hour; the result was, that the Orangemen received a promise from Major Turner that they should have arms; and the next day they received cheques, to the amount of 600l., for the purpose of purchasing arms, to be distributed amongst them exclusively, and which were accordingly procured and given out amongst them.' We entreat our readers to observe this: Lord Enniskillen, in a tête-à-tête conference with the Lord-Lieutenant, asks for arms. The Lord-Lieutenant says he could not give them; but a day or two after, Major Turner, Master of the Horse to his Excellency, with whom Lord Enniskillen had had no previous communication, shows that he is aware of what passed at the tête-à-tête conference between the two Earls, and, in consequence, supplies what what Lord Enniskillen had in that conference demanded. Who told Major Turner of the particulars of that conference? And who authorized the Master of the Horse to comply with a request which Lord Enniskillen had made in private to Lord Clarendon? It is due to Lord Clarendon to record, as we do, his denial of the fact, and it is due to ourselves to state why we are still unable to understand it. But this episode-valeat quantum-only concerns Lord Clarendon's personal consistency; and if he could make his view of it as clear as the rebel flag was on the top of Magheramayo hill, it would not at all affect the transactions of July, 1849. be But there is a second point which was much insisted on by Lord Clarendon, which indeed constituted his whole defence, and on which-weak and narrow as that defence was-it may a satisfaction to our readers to have a few words of explanation: we mean the bold but futile attempt to impeach the correctness of that Report of the Evidence' upon which our strictures on Mr. Berwick were mainly founded. We take upon ourselves to repeat, and we shall prove, that no point of that evidence that we produced has been or can be impugned-no link, not the smallest, of our chain of either narrative or reasoning has been weakened.* The 'Report of the Evidence' we made use of was published in a pamphlet form 'by the editor of the Newry Telegraph in Newry on the 26th of September, 1849, eight days after the Commission closed, and before Mr. Berwick's Report was made known to the world. That evidence remained unimpeached up to the date of our last publication—a period of three months: subsequently its accuracy received a confirmation of the most solemn kind; the Newry reporter verified the faithfulness and correctness' of his notes of the evidence by an affidavit in the Queen's Bench in Ireland; this affidavit was used on a motion in that court, was not impeached in any way, and was even relied on by the counsel for the person opposed to those who had filed the affidavit. After having passed through that ordeal, which admitted the opportunity of a counter-affidavit if there had been any error, we were a little surprised to find that the accuracy of a portion of it was impeached by Lord Clarendon in the House of Lords, upon the mere statement of a 'rival reporter.' The noble Earl on such information told the House * Of one inaccuracy (not our own) we have been informed. We had stated that it was said that Lord Jocelyn answered the Duke of Bedford's suggestion that Lady Jocelyn should not attend the Queen to Dublin by saying, 'If you think so, tell her so, for I won't.' It certainly was so said,' and by what we thought good authority; but we have since heard that Lord Jocelyn's reply was not in those discourteous terms. This is the only point in our whole paper in which we see any thing to explain. that that the reporter of the Newry Telegraph had sworn that he had diligently taken the notes, when in point of fact on the day of the adjourned inquiry he took no notes whatsoever, and was not even present upon that occasion, but received the notes for that day from another reporter and afterwards falsified them; and then his Lordship triumphantly asked the House how could they believe a man who swore that he had taken down evidence in a court where he was not present?' Had the state of facts existed as the noble Earl was informed, a very strong case would have been made out against the personal veracity of the Newry reporter, but not against the great body of the report—not even against the correctness of the small portion thus vicariously reported, which might be all perfectly true, though the person commissioned by the Newry Telegraph should have falsely sworn that he had made it with his own pen. But Lord Clarendon was misinformed; the facts being these:The reporter took all the notes himself during the first, much the largest and most important portion, of the inquiry-occupying 110 pages out of 126 of the report; and six long days of investigation, while the adjourned investigation lasted only one: but on the day of the adjourned inquiry, the regular reporter, being about to be examined as a witness, thought that it would be more proper to employ another reporter. Not, however, being excluded from the court, he attended closely to all that passed, and on the next day he compared the notes thus taken by his substitute in his presence with the report of the Newry Examiner, a paper of opposite politics, and made such alterations in them as made them agree with his own recollection of the evidence, which (his personal recollection) was borne out by the report of the Newry Examiner. Having done so, he was prepared to swear to their 'faithfulness and correctness,' which otherwise he could not have done, and which he was fully justified in doing: but he did not swear, as Lord Clarendon was informed, that he took down the last day's notes himself. It must also be borne in mind that no evidence of the slightest importance was given on that day, it being almost entirely a repetition of parts of the evidence of the former witnesses. Thus the accusation of perjury falls to the ground, and the notes stand verified as to their faithfulness and correctness' by the oath of the reporter. A copy of Mr. Berwick's notes of the evidence had been laid before the Houses of Parliament-but Lord Clarendon did not attempt to show that even Mr. Berwick's own notes bore out Mr. Berwick's Report; in truth, it was impossible, as they are in almost every important particular quite contradictory. Had the attempt to to throw discredit on the evidence we used been as successful as its failure was signal, we could have shown from Mr. Berwick's own Notes how partial and one-sided was his Report. We certainly perused those Notes with no small curiosity, and were by no means surprised to find that even they contradicted his Report, but we were not prepared to find such a wholesale misrepresentation of ' material evidence' as we discovered on reading them. The comparative correctness of the Newry Report' and of Mr. Berwick's Notes' is tested and determined by the following portion of Lord Roden's speech: "I thought it not unlikely that the report of the evidence read by my noble friend (Lord Stanley) might be attempted to be impugned. An application, therefore, was made to certain gentlemen who had given evidence, and were utterly indifferent parties; some of them being officers in her Majesty's service. Considering that it would be the best means of arriving at the truth, copies of the evidence, as given in Mr. Berwick's notes, and as given in the report read by my noble friend (Lord Stanley), were sent to them, with a request that they would read them both, and give their opinion as to which was the best report of the two; and they certified that their evidence, as taken by the shorthand writer, was much fuller and far more accurate than that given by Mr. Berwick. The following are the letters I have received:Belfast, Feb. 14, 1850. My Lord, I have the honour to state, in reply to your Lordship's note, that I consider the report of my evidence, as taken by short-hand, as giving a much fuller account than that of Mr. Berwick, &c.-A. G. WILKINSON, C.B., Major, 13th Light Infantry. Castlewellan, Feb. 13, 1850. My dear Lord,-I have carefully read over Mr. Berwick's minutes of the evidence given by me relative to the affray at Magheramayo on the 12th July. On comparing it with the report of the same, taken by the short-hand writer, and published by Mr. Henderson, I am clearly of opinion that the latter is the most correct and fullest, &c.-GEORGE SHAW, J.P. Castlewellan, Feb. 13, 1850. My Lord, I have carefully read over the reports of my evidence taken at the investigation last year. I think that Mr. Berwick has left out two or three material points which are reported in the short-hand writer's one; and that, of the two, I should recommend it as the best, &c.-WILLIAM PARKER TERRY, Ensign, 9th Foot. Streamville, Rathfriland, Feb. 15, 1850. Dear Sir, I shall feel much obliged by your informing Lord Jocelyn, that I consider my evidence, as reported in Mr. Berwick's notes, neither full, clear, nor correct; and that I am satisfied it is given as fully and fairly as possible in the pamphlet published at Newry.-THOMAS SCOTT, J.P. Castlewellan, |